• Question: What got you into your work?? :)

    Asked by madsmith98 to Cees, Mike, Anil, Blanka, Emma on 22 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by livvilivvilivliv, lionalmessi, saida123, nancyx, animals, chumlee1997, pottertonl, whzoeandphoebe, whdylanddan, whmegandnath, girl.
    • Photo: Michael Cook

      Michael Cook answered on 22 Jun 2012:

      Haha. A mix of accidents and playing a lot of games!

      I always loved videogames. I wanted to be a games journalist when I was in school, but I chose Computing at University because I thought it would help me understand games better. When I got there, I had no idea what it would be about, and I didn’t know how to program.

      It was amazing! I was blown away by the sorts of things people did with computers, and how much there was to learn. I had enjoyed work more than I ever had before. As my degree went on, I discovered that lots of people actually did scientific research with videogames. That was the final straw. I was so excited by this idea that I found a lecturer at my university who did some work with games, and asked him if I could work with him.

      Always try and do something you care about! Loving your job makes it very easy to get up in the mornings. (Loving your job, and coffee.)

    • Photo: Emma Trantham

      Emma Trantham answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Good question madsmith98, livvilivvilivliv & lionalmessi 🙂

      I had a bit of a complicated route to get to where I am now.
      From the age of 8-18 I wanted to be a vet so worked really hard to get to vetschool.

      When at vet school I realised the bits I like were the investigations and problem solving aspects. At the same time I did my first proper research project and really enjoyed it. Later on in vet school I realised that my favourite topics were those diseases that pass from animals to humans and from humans to animals.

      When I got to the end of my vet degree I realised I wanted to follow on with this problem solving more by doing a PhD and I wanted to do a PhD in one of those diseases that pass between animals and humans. I knew my supervisor and what he worked on so I went to him and together we developed a project for me.

      And that’s how I got to where I am…

      I agree with Mike – if you can possibly do a job you care about and enjoy then definitely pursue that! It makes life so much more fun! 🙂

    • Photo: Blanka Sengerova

      Blanka Sengerova answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      When I was doing GCSEs I got really quite interested in chemistry and found that I wanted to study it some more. I ended up studying chemistry and biology, together with maths, at A-level and then decided to study the science of biochemistry at university. the natural progression was to do a PhD and here I am still doing research.

      More fundamentally though, the reason I got into this line of work is because of my inquisitive nature and the wish to find out about the world around me.

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